1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a design assist device, method, and program.
2. Description of the Related Art
In plant design, 3D-CAD has been more and more used as editing software along with recent improvement in capability of computers. A computer in which 3D-CAD runs provides, on its editing screen, a means for arranging various plant installations such as plant equipment, pipes, ducts, and cable trays in a plant, which can assist arrangement and layout design of the plant.
Especially in piping design, because a number of pipes are required to be appropriately arranged in a limited space, there has been disclosed a mechanism of determining piping priority according to pipe attributes such as a diameter and a material of a pipe. For example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application, Publication No. 2002-288250 discloses a method of determining a piping priority in automatically arranging a plurality of pipes according to pipe attributes such as a diameter, a material, and a wall thickness of a pipe.